Chapter Text
Grantaire doesn’t self-harm. He doesn’t take a blade to his skin; he doesn’t raise lighter nor heated metal to his flesh and feel it char.
Instead, Grantaire drinks from the moment he wakes to the moment he passes out. He drinks hard liquor in the morning, beer in the afternoon, and spirits at night. This is not to keep his ghosts away, no, he invites them into his inebriated brain and allows them to dance unabashedly around his skull. Firstly, the drinking is for pain. Secondly, the drinking is for misery. Thirdly, the drinking is to be free of it all.
Sometimes, many times, he replays Enjolras’s targeted insults over and over until they become his second voice. “You’re wasting our time, Grantaire.” “You believe in nothing.” “You’re a drunkard.” “You’re a cynic.” His morals are questionable; his existence is flawed and useless. The proclamations affirm every whisper of guilt and shame and self-doubt in his mind. They are the confirmations of God, his own personal commandments.
The alcohol is his razor; the words are his burn.
Enjolras doesn’t self-harm. He doesn’t take a blade to his skin; he doesn’t raise lighter nor heated metal to his flesh and feel it char.
Instead, Enjolras misses a meal a day, sometimes two, sometimes more. “For Patria,” he jokes when his friends express concern. “She sustains me in a way that food cannot.” He eats just enough for his pallor to be considered “marble” and not “ghostly.” He gets a macabre thrill from the dizziness that hits him when he stands too quickly. He shames himself by starving himself.
Sometimes he allows Grantaire to go on rants for too long. He listens to the words against his cause spoken so confidently and allows himself to flood with the self-doubt that he tries so hard to dam. He fights back, of course, but when he is in the mood for pain he lets it go on and on until finally it is too much and he shuts Grantaire down with petty insults. “Do you love nothing besides the brandy in your hand and the woman in your bed?” “You have nothing to offer but philosophy and banter.” “You are of no use for our cause.”
The starvation is his razor; the words are his burn.
***
Enjolras finds out about Grantaire’s scars while attending to his own. They are mid-debate, but it cannot truly be considered a debate when Enjolras gave up long ago. He absorbs every counter-argument Grantaire makes as an absolute truth, as an admonishment for trying, as a slap for doing it wrong. He is letting it go on for too long today, he realizes, as he notices Combeferre’s steady, concerned gaze in his direction. He is in no place to fight fairly, so instead he tears Grantaire down.
“Enough, Grantaire,” he says, and the two words alone with their authority and conviction prove their intent to the curly-haired artist, who stops instantly to stare, his mouth still half-open. He understands that this moment is over. “Our cause is one of many facets and nuances. There is no point in trying to dissuade me. You come here not as a friend, but as a devil’s advocate and a heckler.”
Something curious crosses Grantaire’s face, something between a sneer and shame. His mouth squirms and settles awkwardly between a forced smile and a flat line. “A heckler you call me, when you promote liberté and Révolution! When you yourself serve as a heckler to King Louis-Philippe!”
“Don’t pretend that you care about the government, or my ways, or our cause. You care for nothing. You’re a passive bystander to your own existence.”
Enjolras should not be this cruel, he knows, but he is out of sorts and just wants to end this. He realizes his hurriedness was his mistake as he watches Grantaire’s eyes cloud over, his expression close off, and his countenance turn gloomy.
“A passive bystander to my own existence? Eloquent as ever, Enjolras, much better than the simple ‘cynic’ or the dismissing ‘drunkard.’ Tell me, what are the other ways in which I am a failure?”
Their friends, who had been chatting quietly amongst themselves, have now gone silent. Grantaire laughs bitterly and looks up as if to recall something towards the back of his mind.
“I sleep around, far too frequently, and with questionable characters; I start fights in every bar I walk into; I stand for nothing?” He laughs again, and this time it sounds like the cry of a wounded animal.
“Grantaire, that's enough,” Joly says. He reaches out for Grantaire's elbow, but Grantaire jerks it out of his reach. Grantaire's eyes are locked on Enjolras’, and Enjolras is spellbound.
“Tell me, fearless leader, god Apollo; how else have I wronged the human race?”
Enjolras does not reply. He can’t reply, not when his words from weeks, months ago are being thrown in his face. He only vaguely remembers making some of these arguments, but here Grantaire presents them as though they’re preserved works of art, something studied and regularly attended to.
His friends must think he’s spending his silence lining up for the kill, because Combeferre and Courfeyrac both take hold of his shoulders as if to keep him from lashing out. “Let him go,” Combeferre murmurs, gentle yet commanding, only serving to remind Enjolras of the way he snapped at Grantaire only moments before.
Grantaire must be broken, Enjolras thinks, because as they stare at each other, chests heaving, hearts beating in tandem, there is no rebuttal. No witty quip. Grantaire doesn’t joke that he’s silenced God. Rather he stands transfixed, eyes shining, for a few moments more before slowly dropping his gaze and exiting the room.
There is silence until Courfeyrac speaks.
“Is it just me or did that escalate more than usual?”
Enjolras looks down and shakes his head, still stunned by Grantaire’s display. The way Grantaire could recall things Enjolras had said that he himself could no longer remember; the way he recited it with a paradoxical combination of emotionlessness, pain, and spite; it reminds him of his own habit of keeping Grantaire’s words as a tool for self-destruction. Perhaps, he thinks, they are not too unalike.
“Are you okay, Enjolras?” Combeferre says, turning Enjolras to face him, but Enjolras is pulling himself away.
“I have to go,” he says, not looking around the room, at the faces of his friends, at the faces of people who haven’t the slightest idea of the shame and fear and regret coursing through him.
“Enjolras, don’t terrorize Grantaire any more than you already-”
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Enjolras says, already free of his friend’s grasp, already out of the room and down the stairs and out the door into the street.
It is late and the streetlights are dim, but he can see a man hustling away into the darkness. “Grantaire!” he calls, and the man hesitates for a moment, not turning around, before continuing on again. Enjolras huffs and his breath mists out before him. “Grantaire, wait!”
Grantaire does not wait, but Enjolras runs to catch up to him.
“Grantaire, please, let me-”
In a second Grantaire rounds on him, and the pair are standing almost nose-to-nose. Enjolras fully expects Grantaire to glare until Enjolras burns and to yell until he’s sliced open, but instead Grantaire's eyes are brimming with tears and his voice is gentler than a wisp of summer wind.
“What is it, Enjolras?”
These words, words that should have been commonplace, that should have felt like everything was normal and comfortable and fine only underscored the fact that everything was wrong. Grantaire was drowning in pain wrought by Enjolras’ hand and yet he was willing to take more if it was what Enjolras wanted. And Enjolras understood him, understood the willingness for pain, the desire for it.
Enjolras saw his suffering mirrored in Grantaire and felt the most connected to someone since he had first found his love for Patria.
The feeling was overwhelming. His fingers tingled; his heart raced; his mind buzzed with a thousand thoughts but the overwhelming one was SHELTER: here I’ve found understanding here I’ve found comradery here I’ve found support here I’ve found love here I’ve found HOME.
And Enjolras knows his friends love him, and that they would support him, and that they would help him if he chose to open up, but here with Grantaire he wouldn’t have to explain himself. Grantaire would know exactly what he was going through, exactly what to say, exactly how to feel.
Enjolras pulls Grantaire into a hug, their bodies melding together like they had meant to be this way all along. Grantaire tenses only for a moment before relaxing into the natural intimacy of the embrace. His arms wrap timidly around Enjolras, and his mouth is close enough to Enjolras’ ear that when he whispers, Enjolras can hear him as clear as if he had spoken in his mind.
“What is it, Enjolras?”
Tears fill Enjolras’ eyes.
“We will help each other.”